Install on an R640 - No Drives Shown

[cassini12]

HI all

I have an R640, Attempting to install TrueNas Scale for now. I also tested with Core. I gparted this server after initially having same issue and I made 2 Partitions, a 20GB ospart, and a 3TB data partition. Yet I only ever see a single option when I install and then once its up of course I dont see any available drives at all.

Is this PERC H740P just not compatible or is there something I can do to get it to allow me 2 seperate partitions or am I forced to buy an additional hard drive caddy bay and insert another SSD?

Thanks!

 

[Ericloewe]

I gparted this server after initially having same issue and I made 2 Partitions, a 20GB ospart, and a 3TB data partition.

Is this PERC H740P just not compatible or is there something I can do to get it to allow me 2 seperate partitions or am I forced to buy an additional hard drive caddy bay and insert another SSD?

There's a lot wrong here and you need to take two steps back and read up on the topic before, at best, wasting your time, and at worst, losing your data.

Hardware RAID is not acceptable. At all. Nor does it make any sense, why would you want to use hardware RAID with ZFS?

The good news is that you can just replace the H740P Mini with an HBA330 Mini and avoid all the hardware RAID nonsense. You will still need one or more dedicated devices to boot from.

 

[danb35]

You will still need one or more dedicated devices to boot from.

Quoting this for emphasis, because somehow lots of people manage to miss it, even though the installer explicitly says this, and every piece of documentation for Free/TrueNAS also says it. @cassini12, TrueNAS (both CORE and SCALE) requires a dedicated boot device, that's used for nothing else.

 

[cassini12]

There's a lot wrong here and you need to take two steps back and read up on the topic before, at best, wasting your time, and at worst, losing your data.

Hardware RAID is not acceptable. At all. Nor does it make any sense, why would you want to use hardware RAID with ZFS?

The good news is that you can just replace the H740P Mini with an HBA330 Mini and avoid all the hardware RAID nonsense. You will still need one or more dedicated devices to boot from.

Thank you both for your reply. Ok this makes sense.
So if I buy the HBA330 Mini, Does that make my SSD's non raid and more like JBOD?

Is there no way to just disable RAID and use the 5 front loaded SSDs without buying that HBA330 Mini? Assuming this is it.

 

[Ericloewe]

So if I buy the HBA330 Mini, Does that make my SSD's non raid and more like JBOD?

I dislike the term "JBOD" when used to describe this, but in a nutshell, yes. The HBA330 is an LSI SAS3008 with lightly customized IT mode firmware (the vendor string gets changed and nothing else), so you get SCSI direct-attach disks with no hardware RAID nonsense.

Is there no way to just disable RAID and use the 5 front loaded SSDs without buying that HBA330 Mini? Assuming this is it.

Simple answer is "no". Long answer is "sort of, at the cost of performance and possibly pain". For 20 bucks, it's a clear no-brainer. You can probably sell the H740P Mini for way more than that.

5 front loaded SSDs

TrueNAS (both CORE and SCALE) requires a dedicated boot device

Five SSDs is an odd number (yeah, crappy pun intended). What is your plan, exactly? There's a decent chance you'd want to use mirrors instead of RAIDZ (depends on your workload), so you'd want probably a multiple of two.

On the bright side, lots of empty bays, so you can just throw in a pair of decent SATA SSDs (As far as such a thing still exists, think Samsung 870 Evo, or even Crucial MX500. For the boot devices, nearly anything is good enough.) and boot from those.

 

[cassini12]

I dislike the term "JBOD" when used to describe this, but in a nutshell, yes. The HBA330 is an LSI SAS3008 with lightly customized IT mode firmware (the vendor string gets changed and nothing else), so you get SCSI direct-attach disks with no hardware RAID nonsense.

Simple answer is "no". Long answer is "sort of, at the cost of performance and possibly pain". For 20 bucks, it's a clear no-brainer. You can probably sell the H740P Mini for way more than that.



Five SSDs is an odd number (yeah, crappy pun intended). What is your plan, exactly? There's a decent chance you'd want to use mirrors instead of RAIDZ (depends on your workload), so you'd want probably a multiple of two.

On the bright side, lots of empty bays, so you can just throw in a pair of decent SATA SSDs (As far as such a thing still exists, think Samsung 870 Evo, or even Crucial MX500. For the boot devices, nearly anything is good enough.) and boot from those.

Thank you! I ordered the part and I have 3 spare caddys so I will add them in and use 2 for OS install and the others for pool data. thank you for your help!